More In Your Life

A divine perspective on Sandy

Posted: Dec. 3, 2012 9:12 am Updated: Dec. 7, 2012 1:00 pm

The glowing, translucent white apple with the bite taken out of it flashes momentarily across the glassine black background of my iPhone every morning as it boots up. The fleeting image serves as a daily reminder of The Curse from which technology was meant to redeem us -- at least in the mind of the late Steve Jobs, the iPhone's inventor.

But there have been more than enough catastrophes in my lifetime to remind me that the Earth is no Garden of Eden. In the last decade alone -- 9-11, tsunamis, a nuclear core meltdown, earthquakes, wars, hurricanes, floods and tornadoes that leveled entire cities and a near-financial collapse that brought the world's economies to the edge of the abyss.

Hurricane Sandy was the most recent reminder.

The Monday of the storm we were sitting around the dining room table eating supper. The wind had picked up earlier that afternoon but we still had electricity. Then the lights dimmed once and again, and a third time.

My older daughter, Rebecca, said, "Oh, I hope we lose power, that would be so cool." No sooner were the words spoken when the lights went out.

We finished supper by candlelight, minimized the times we had to open and close the refrigerator and looked helplessly out the window at the darkness that seemed to spread to infinity.

The wind howled through the night. I had difficulty falling asleep.

We awoke the next morning to learn that indeed we had been very fortunate. Although our neighborhood was trashed beyond anything I had ever seen in our 20 years of living in Butler, we had survived the storm virtually unscathed. No one had been hurt and no property had been damaged.

We ended up losing power for 48 hours -- a blessing in comparison to the travails of others. We had to throw out two half-gallons of thawed orange sherbet and a few soggy bagels. I waited twice in line for gasoline, both times a mere 30 minutes near the end of what now seems to have been a shortage driven largely by panic.

My parents, if they were still alive, would have their own survival stories to tell -- Pearl Harbor, two World Wars, the Great Depression, the hurricanes of the 1950s, all very unsettling events, some of which threatened the very fabric of their existence.

And I am sure my grandparents would have had stories to share too -- the Blizzard of '88, the explosion of Krakatoa, life without antibiotics, modern anesthesia, or the widespread availability of electricity for that matter.

My great-grandmother was born during the Civil War, lived more than 100 years and died during the Space Age.

No generation is immune from the dangers of living on Planet Earth. It only seems worse to us because of the technological advances in real-time communication Mr. Jobs and his industry colleagues have labored to bring literally into the palm of our hand.

That, coupled with an ever more daring fraternity of journalists and meteorologists tethered to microphones and cameras beaming real-time images, 24-7, to our high-definition color TV sets, have the power to transport us into the epicenter of whatever disaster is occurring.

It is no wonder that many who sit transfixed in front of the screen, taking in these images of human suffering as they play out are left to wonder, "Where is God in all this?"

In a little more than three weeks, we will celebrate the birth of the One who came into this world to free us from this curse.

He, too, was born into turbulent times, when the iron fist of Rome oppressed His own people and ruled much of the Western World. Peace -- the Pax Romana -- was enforced through unusually cruel methods, which included a torturous death by crucifixion.

But God was there.

As Isaiah wrote in the Old Testament, and Matthew expanded upon in the New, "See, a virgin will become pregnant and give birth to a son, and they will name him Immanuel," which means, ‘God with us.'"

And He still is today.

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(Gregory J. Rummo is a columnist and author of "The View From the Grass Roots." Contact Rummo at GregRummo.com)

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